


when else will we be so young and poorly behaved?

by kenopsia (indie)



Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: But also romantic kissing, F/M, M/M, Platonic Kissing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-31
Updated: 2017-12-31
Packaged: 2019-02-24 10:50:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,458
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13212207
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/indie/pseuds/kenopsia
Summary: “Come on, Czerny, what’s going on? You can tell me.”“Ronan said to give you a big smooch.”Gansey laughed, the tension fleeing. “Oh, is that all?” he asked. Noah nodded sheepishly. “Noah, he was winding you up.”“He wasn’t,” Noah insisted.Noah and Ronan were close, perhaps as close as he and Gansey, but somehow, Noah had missed it. Ronan made jokes like that all the time, meant to needle Gansey for being a nagging house-mother. (A little unfair, in Gansey’s opinion, because he was the one who had arranged for Ronan to live with him in Monmouth where there was no curfew and not in Piety, where a curfew would be the least of Ronan’s rule-related problems.)“He was—” Gansey went to explain, but then Noah cut him off: “I know because he gave it to me. He didn’t just say it.”[TRC Holiday Exchange 2017]





	when else will we be so young and poorly behaved?

**Author's Note:**

  * For [spikenard](https://archiveofourown.org/users/spikenard/gifts).



> for spikenards, which is terrifying because he is talented as hell. i hope you enjoy this fic! after you read it i have some Supplemental Info for you, friend. Happy New Year!
> 
> Also, this fic is set in some made-up point in the timeline where sexual tension is thick on the ground, but no one has acted on it yet.

Gansey said Noah’s name to acknowledge that he was there, because he’d been shuffling from foot to foot for several minutes. 

He was less substantial than average, and the shuffling didn’t make a sound, but Noah and Gansey had an insomniac’s silent camaraderie. Gansey was usually aware of him. When Noah stilled but did not otherwise respond, Gansey looked up at him to give him his full attention. “Yes, dear?” he said, mouth curling. 

Noah went faintly pink. 

“Ronan left. He won’t be home until late.”

“Oh,” Gansey said. “I — thank you?”

“He had something for you,” Noah said. 

In the usual order of operations, Gansey was made aware of Ronan’s comings and goings by way of incidental noise: he heard Ronan slam the door behind himself or throw his car into gear and roar off into the night, or, on the opposite end of the spectrum, heard his music cut off. He was rarely aware that Ronan was gone because Ronan wanted him to know. The fact that he had left something with Noah, as if Noah was their doorman, was unthinkable.

“Alright,” Gansey said, getting to his feet. It felt important that he do so. He held out a hand. 

“I can’t hand it to you,” Noah said. He looked like he usually did, which was to say, smudged and rumpled in his half of an Aglionby uniform.

“Okay,” Gansey said. “What is it?”

“I can’t say,” he said. It didn’t sound coy, like Noah was teasing. Gansey interpreted it as embarrassed. Noah was the same species as Ronan, a little crass and hyper. Gansey was fascinated to see him looking awkward. It made something flutter inside of him to see it. 

“Come on, Czerny, what’s going on? You can tell me.”

“Ronan said to give you a big smooch.” 

Gansey laughed, the tension fleeing. “Oh, is that all?” he asked. Noah nodded sheepishly. “Noah, he was winding you up.”

“He wasn’t,” Noah insisted. 

Noah and Ronan were close, perhaps as close as he and Gansey, but somehow, Noah had missed it. Ronan made jokes like that all the time, meant to needle Gansey for being a nagging house-mother. (A little unfair, in Gansey’s opinion, because he was the one who had arranged for Ronan to live with him in Monmouth where there was no curfew and not in  _ Piety,  _ where a curfew would be the least of Ronan’s rule-related problems.) 

“He was—” Gansey went to explain, but then Noah cut him off: “I know because he gave it to me. He didn’t just  _ say it. _ ”

That stopped Gansey in his tracks. “Oh?” he said. His heart kicked it up a gear. He felt it speeding up, felt the warm rush to his extremities. 

“Yeah,” Noah fidgeted with the sleeve of his sweater, which had ridden up his wrist. 

“So,” Gansey said, thinking of Ronan, hauty and goading, and Noah, who is most alive when he’s letting Ronan wind him up. He’s also a little overwhelmed at the imagine of it in his mind, of Ronan leaning down to press his mouth against Noah’s. “Were you going to deliver that, or...”

Noah’s eyes darted up, and then back down, like eye contact with Gansey burned. “If you want it.” 

Gansey did want it. There’s something wrong with Gansey, something tangled inside of him where he can’t seem to make a friend without falling in halfway in love. He’s all the way in love with Ronan, though. 

Gansey is not very tall. Noah does not seem very tall, but probably that is a function of standing next to Ronan so often. By the time he’d crowded into Gansey’s space, Gansey was undeniably aware of the fact that Noah is a good four or five inches taller than himself. 

Gansey isn’t sure if some part of this is going to end up some sort of joke, but with his heart slaming against his ribcage like it’s making an escape, he forgets to think about it, just sinks into the press of it, the wisp of Noah’s existence, growing more tangible against Gansey, and by the time Gansey’s hands have found his way to Noah’s face, he’s almost warm. 

When he pulled away, Noah’s eyes were distant. “Well,” Noah said, shaking his head until some of his soft, blond hair landed across his eyes, “that was it.”

Noah took on step and he was at the door of Monmouth again, as if Gansey’s brain had skipped a few frames. That was the first time Noah had delivered a kiss from one point to another, although at the time Gansey did not know to frame it as such. 

*

It colonized Gansey’s brain: he thought about it day and night, it set up camp and a little farmstead and there were generally not very many moments in the coming few days that Gansey was not aware that Ronan had kissed Noah (and that thought on its own was distracting enough) and that Noah had  _ passed along  _ that kiss to Ronan. 

If his blood pressure stayed this high for much longer, he was going to have to see a medical professional. 

Ronan did not seem to be avoiding him, and yet, two or three anxious days passed without him speaking to Gansey. They never seemed to be at Monmouth at the same time; the seemed to ride separately to school, and when Gansey asked if Ronan wanted to split a pizza from Nino’s with him, he was suddenly busy with other tasks. 

On the third day, however, Adam and Blue had biked over and Ronan came out of his bedroom to take over the hookup to Gansey’s speakers before anyone else could. Gansey was so glad that things seemed to have returned to normal that he did not even gripe about the unpleasant sounds Ronan had filled the room with. 

“Hey Dick,” Ronan said, and waited until he had Gansey’s full attention to go on: “I left something for you with Noah the other day, did you get it?”

“Yes, Ronan,” he said, doing his best to radiate calm and good sense, because of then them had to. 

“Did you pass it along?” Ronan asked, like butter wouldn’t melt in his mouth. 

Ronan could be cruel, and he was definitely unusual, but something about the twist of his upper lip reminded Gansey of being fifteen with him, teasing and impish. Gansey said: “Oh. I didn’t realize that was the custom, forgive me,” and leveled a look at Noah, exposing his hand and wrist in an invitational gesture. 

Noah looked at Ronan and Ronan grinned at him, that same playful look and Noah’s face reminded Gansey of a toy boat, buoyant and unanchored. Noah only hesitated a minute before going to Gansey, and planting himself in front. 

All of their eyes were on him: Ronan’s gaze catlike and amused, but the other two were puzzled. That heightened Gansey’s awareness of himself. He felt an intimate knowledge of his own body, an awareness of his pulse and his own fingerprints. 

“Do I — give it back?” he asked Noah. Or Ronan? Gansey wasn’t sure who was setting the rules here.

“You can,” Noah said, “but Blue and Adam are here, too. Seems like a waste.” 

Blue and Adam looked at each other. Gansey looked at Ronan over Noah’s shoulder, who gave him a quick chin nod. 

He wavered for a moment before saying, in a low voice, “Go ahead and give this to Noah. I don’t want to give Adam or Blue a heart attack,” and then he pulled Noah close, and pressed his lips to Noah’s in a simple gesture. It didn’t keep his heart from hammering. 

Gansey was afraid to look at Blue and Adam, which was easy because all of them were staring at Noah, who had moved to Ronan. Ronan had his enormous hands on Noah’s waist as soon as he was in range, practically pulled him onto his lap. 

The kiss Noah brought him was not the same kiss Gansey had sent. Gansey, who was familiar with pornography in an experimental way, had never derived the same sort of reaction from it that he experienced now. His brain exploded like fireworks in a dozen directions: some part of him dancing in sheer delight at the way his friends fit together, some parts of him jealous and some insanely satisfied, and all of him, completely interested. 

God, it was painful to look at, but also glorious, Noah half-climbed into Ronan’s lap, Ronan’s hitched breathing audible in the near silence of monmouth, Ronan’s hands shifting on Noah’s back and Noah’s spine curving in response, Noah and Ronan’s faces shifting to accommodate each other, and the occasional wet, sucking noise as they parted fractionally going straight to Gansey’s lizard brain. Ronan looked so gorgeous, lithe and coiled, the visible parts of his tattoo on his neck a tempting blur beneath Noah’s hands. 

Gansey let out an involuntary noise, and Ronan pulled away from Noah, just long enough to look at Gansey. His lower lip was wet, and Gansey watched, transfixed, as he pressed one more kiss to the side of Noah’s face. Noah’s eyes were closed, and he looked pleased with himself. 

“Thanks,” Ronan said to — Gansey? Noah? Gansey couldn’t seem to get his brain back to a linear, coherent, thought pattern. 

“Well,” Adam drawled. Blue snapped her attention to him when he spoke, but Gansey look at her just in time to see her mouth snap shut. “That was quite a show.”

Gansey’s body was confused by the fact that there were  _ so many people  _ in Monmouth, all having witnessed something that seemed so intimate, and still Ronan was sprawled out in his chair, holding their friend as if nothing out of the ordinary had happened. Gansey felt his chest constricted, confused and overheated. 

“Should, uh, my, um, Adam and I, we should leave, right?” 

Noah looked at her beseechingly. The connection between Noah and Blue always did something to Gansey, made him want to encourage the softness between the two of them. “No,” he said. “Unless you want to.”

“I mean, it kind of seems like you guys have some stuff you need to sort out.” 

“If you want to,” Noah repeated, untangling himself from the vine of Ronan’s grip. “Or,” he said. 

Blue’s eyebrows scrambled up towards her forehead in surprise. “Or?” she said, in a voice growing faint with surprise. 

Ronan let out a bark of laughter. “What that fuck do you think,  _ or?  _ Sargent, he’s asking you if you want to use the Noah Czerny kiss delivery service.”

“Oh,” she said, reaching up to nervously adjust one of the weird odds and ends keeping her hair in place. This one was a short pencil she had hot glued to what Gansey had recently learned was called an alligator clip. It only took a moment for her to regain composure. “Oh, no thanks, Noah. I’m good; I’ve been kissed by loads of handsome dudes, today, actually.”

“ _ What _ ,” Adam half yelped, before slapping his own pal to his face. “Sorry, I just… charlie horse.” 

Blue looked at him out of the corner of her eyes. “Was that the offer?” she asked him. 

Noah nodded at her, very solemnly. 

“Well, then,” she said, and chewed on her bottom lip. 

Watching Noah kiss Blue was even more uniquely confusing than watching him kiss Ronan. Noah lingered for so long a breath away that Gansey’s skin was buzzing with impatience by the time they finally came together. It took a moment to realize that he was waiting for Blue to lean in and complete the circuit. 

Gansey was literally going to die in his own warehouse apartment, he thought. His obituary was going to be humiliating.  _ Local boy dies with an erection during teen orgy with ghost.  _

If Ronan could hear his thoughts, he’d be laughing at him for sure, that of  _ course  _ Gansey was ready to call the thing happening in Monmouth an orgy after two kisses, but the energy in the room was electric, with Gansey’s internal organs twisted up inside of him like a balloon animal, and the sound of everyone’s breathing. 

When Blue finally pulled away, she leaned back in for a quick little noisy smack on Noah’s nose, to which Noah looked insanely pleased. He still had both hands in her hair. 

“Do you want to deliver that to Adam?” she asked in a stage whisper.

Adam looked positively apoplexic, but when Noah turned his eyes to him, as if waiting on his reaction, he swallowed loud enough for the whole room to hear it. 

“Go get ‘em, tiger,” Ronan said, and so Noah did. 

Gansey felt just as transfixed, but this time he made the effort to tear his eyes away, to look at Blue, who was staring at Adam and Noah with a glazed expression, chewing absently on the side of her own fingernail, and to Ronan, who was already looking at Gansey. 

Ronan raised an eyebrow and Gansey shot him a look he trusted Ronan, who he’d been friends with longest of all, to interpret correctly. Ronan seemed to deliberately change the angle of his open legs, not breaking eye contact. Gansey needed a minute, needed to fan himself away from the firework-sharp scrutiny of Ronan’s gaze, to splash water on his face. 

Gansey couldn’t even wrap his head around it, Ronan who was seemingly goading him, but had set this all in motion; Blue, Adam and Noah on his floor, all of whom he loved very much and who seemed to be going through their own revelations on the floor, perhaps inevitably, but also equally likely: egged on by the fact that no one seemed to be objecting to anything happening. 

After Adam and Noah stopped kissing, they stared at each other. All of them. Gansey slid his eyes around like a game of hot potato, and noticed in the process that they were all doing the same. 

Finally, it was Ronan who spoke. “Holy fucking shit, guys.” 

“You’re telling me,” Adam said. 

“Is that —” Gansey said, feeling inarticulate and hopeless, “is everyone okay?” 

Blue let out a laugh and went to him, rubbing her hand through the hair at the back of her neck. “I kissed someone,” she said to him, as if confiding some big secret, “and I didn’t kill  _ anyone. _ ” 

“Gansey, way to ruin the mood,” Ronan bit out. 

“Checking on your partners does not  _ kill the mood, _ ” Noah said, giving Gansey a little thumbs-up and a cheeky smile. 

“So. That’s a thing that happened,” Adam said. His hair was rucked up in the back, and Gansey felt a warm possessiveness over him. Over all of them. Adam had always chafed, said that Gansey wanted all of his things under one roof. Gansey couldn’t deny that. Having everyone where he could see them made him feel that they were all safe, and be extension, that he himself would live to see another day. He could not explain it in a way that did not make him sound unbalanced, but he hoped one day Adam would understand that it have nothing to do with control and everything to do with his own panic. 

“Not to get too formal with this moment,” Gansey said, and Blue let out a loud groan, gravitating to move back towards Adam, whom she sat much closer to than he had before. In fact, after maneuvering herself to be right next to him on the floor, she picked up one leg and deposited it in his lap without looking at him, the way a dog sometimes tries to sneak onto forbidden furniture one limb at a time. Adam looked ecstatic, and Gansey powered on, “would we like to take it to a vote about if we want to create a ban on every referencing this moment again, or...”

“Or...” Noah said. 

“Or we keep going,” Ronan said. 

Adam’s hand seems to have found its way to Blue’s knee, and he is sitting with the posture of a tense, classic pianist. “I’m not really trying to lose my virginity to four people in a warehouse. No offense.” 

Gansey’s a little relieved Adam said it so he wouldn’t have to. 

“Of course not,” Ronan sneers, and Gansey half-expects him to say something nasty, but instead he says, “no one here is married.”

“Oh my God,” Blue says, and presses her knuckles against her mouth to keep from laughing. Gansey looks at Ronan, and he’s smirking, too. 

“But like, come on, Maggot, when else are we going to be this young and poorly behaved again?”

“Knowing, you, Ronan,” Blue says, trailing off with a suggestive wiggle of her eyebrows. 

“I hate to let Gansey legislate my misbehavior as much as the next guy—” Ronan started, but Blue made and unhappy noise and he course-corrected, “as much as the next  _ non-gendered miscreant,  _ but I would like to have this out. Are some or all of us interested in making out, barring the maggot, who should only be allowed to kiss people who are already dead? And me, I guess, because I sure as shit am not your true-fucking-love.” 

Chatter broke out around the room, in a way that sounded to Gansey like excitement, but Gansey only had eyes for one of his friends. He crooked his finger at the most translucent of them and crossed the threshold into Noah’s bedroom, waiting for him to follow. 

“Hey,” he said, when it was just the two of them. He could hear the other three talking in the cavernous space of monmouth, but it seemed listless, like the kind of small talk you make when you’re all trying to eavesdrop on something else. Noah still looked good, corporeal. Gansey took one of his hand between his own. 

“Hey,” Noah said, smiling a little. “You okay?”

“I was going to ask you the same thing,” Gansey said, and rubbed at his hands. “I wanted to make sure you were okay with what happened back there. With you being some kind of …  _ kiss vector. _ ”

“Oh, Gansey,” Noah said, and gave him a quick hug. It was nice to press his face against Noah’s neck, which wasn’t warm by any stretch of the imagination, but was a welcoming space. “Of course.”

“I just worried,” he said, feeling safe in the circle of Noah’s arms. Noah was sensitive, nervous. Noah relied on Gansey to make sure nothing got out of hand, and wouldn’t make fun of his anxieties now, “because I think there is some pairing off happening now, and I don’t want you to feel used or unloved.” 

“Gansey,” Noah said. Gansey had read somewhere that most people’s favorite word to hear was their own name. Gansey understood why. It made things unmistakably personal, intimate, made him feel recognized. “Look at me.”

Gansey did. Noah looked the way he always did, translucent if you stared too hard, pale, rumpled. It was easier to see through the smudge on his face, see it for what it was, now that they knew what it was. “What am I looking for?” Gansey whispered. 

“I’m falling apart,” Noah said, and Gansey felt a sob rise in his own chest. “It’s getting hard enough for me to stay present and visible for a few hours at a time. I can’t be — you know — I can’t be anyone’s boyfriend right now.”

There was nothing Gansey felt like he could say to Noah, which was good, because Noah didn’t pause long enough for them both to find out if the silence would linger, awkwardly, or if Gansey would blurt out exactly the  _ wrong  _ thing. 

“But being deal is empty, a lot of the time. Lonely. I like getting touched, and I love being loved,” Noah said. 

Gansey pulled their hands, still joined, up to his face. “Oh, Noah,” he said, voice cracking. 

“It’s okay,” Noah told him, in a thin voice. “I’m really glad I met all of you.”

“Me too,” Gansey croaked, and then pulled Noah flush against him again, palming his face and shoulder. Gansey had to tilt up to touch his mouth, soft and cold but warming up. He kissed Noah like there weren’t three teenagers outside the door, like he had nothing to do all day but to linger here. When he pulled away, Noah smiled at him, a little sadly. “Who was that for?” he asked. 

“Just you,” he said, touching Noah’s forehead with his own. 

“Thanks,” Noah said, and seemed to grow more solid against Gansey. He looked flushed when Gansey really looked at him, smudge looking like perhaps Gansey just needed to give his glasses a swipe on his sweater. “Now let’s go make out with our friends.”


End file.
